WINOOSKI – Anyone clicking on the Vermont Health Connect website sees a message in bold black letters on a pale green screen that advises the site is down for maintenance.

This will be more than a short-term shut down, Gov. Peter Shumlin and his top health officials explained Tuesday. It could be weeks before health insurance customers would be able to resume buying plans, check accounts or pay electronically on Vermont Health Connect. In the interim, all Health Connect related transactions will be handled by call center personnel.

Vermont Health Connect, a federally mandated online marketplace for health insurance, has never fully functioned. Since it went live Oct. 1, state officials and several consultants have wrestled to identify problems and make fixes while continuing to operate the website.

"As all Vermonters know, we've had disappointment after disappointment with the Vermont Health Connect website," the governor said Tuesday. "I have been very frustrated that the website remains incomplete. Bringing down the site now to make improvements with our new partner Optum is the best choice to deliver a well-functioning, secure website for customers by the open enrollment period that begins November 15."

Although health care is the top issue in this year's gubernatorial race, Democratic incumbent Shumlin said politics wasn't a consideration when he weighed whether to shut down the website. "My job is to make the right decision."

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Interim Human Services Secretary Dr. Harry Chen, pictured her in June, joined Gov. Peter Shumlin in announcing the state is temporarily shutting down the Vermont Health Connect website so it can be fixed before the start of the next enrollment period in November.
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Acting Human Services Secretary Harry Chen recommended the shutdown to the governor over the weekend. Shumlin agreed and ordered it shut down Monday night.

"It doesn't make sense to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result," Chen said Tuesday about continuing to try to fix the website while operating it. "This is a prudent choice to have better operations, better security and a better consumer experience."

Chen acknowledged the downside to shutting down.

"Vermonters have doubts about our ability to come through and to some this might seem confirmatory of that," he said. "I see it as preventive medicine to get things to run smoothing by Nov. 15."

Shumlin recently moved Chen, a former emergency room doctor who has been serving as health commissioner, into the top job at the Agency of Human Services. The governor asked Chen to evaluate and potentially shake up operations in the agency, which has struggled with child protection troubles as well as the challenges posed by the malfunctioning health insurance exchange.

Reaction

"I'm really surprised," Trinka Kerr, health care advocate with Legal Aid said about the shutdown. "We had no idea. I hope it means they can get it running smoothly."

Kerr and her staff work with Vermonters who have problems with government health programs, including Vermont Health Connect.

"Right now we have a lot of concerns about how things will work for people while the site is down," Kerr said. Many people signing up for insurance on the exchange qualify for federal assistance to pay their monthly premiums, she noted. "If people call and are trying to enroll, will someone be able to figure out what the subsidy is?"

Skeptics and critics of the administration's implementation of Vermont Health Connect welcomed the shutdown announcement.

Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Scott said taking the troubled website offline was both appropriate and long overdue.

"It's my belief we should transition to the much simpler and fully functional federal exchange that 27 other states have successfully used, and that seven more are working with in partnership with the government," Scott said in an email statement. "I want the exchange to work. But I think it's time to face reality and admit we need to stop trying to "get it right" with Vermont Health Connect and do the right thing for Vermonters."

Dean Corren, the Progressive/Democrat challenging Scott's re-election bid, countered that closing down Vermont Health Connect permanently and shifting to the federal exchange was "an unworkable approach, and no solution. Not only would it mean greater costs for lower income Vermonters, it would eliminate the coverage standards that Vermonters have adopted."

Corren also noted that the website's difficulties are "mostly due to the complexity of the current, insurance company-based hodge-podge." A single-payer system, which Corren advocates, would be much simpler.

Dan Feliciano, the Libertarian candidate for governor, has made health care the focus of his challenge of Shumlin.

"I still think Vermont Health Connect is going to be a disaster," Feliciano said, but praised the decision to shut it down. He had worried that trying to fix computer code while continuing to operate the site could put Vermonters' personal information at risk.

"I still say keep it down and put it to bed," Feliciano said. Like Scott, Feliciano favors abandoning Vermont Health Connect and switching to the federal health insurance exchange.

Reorganization

In addition to announcing a shutdown, Shumlin and Chen said that Lawrence Miller, chief of health reform on the governor's staff, would take charge of Vermont Health Connect.

The health insurance exchange has been overseen by Mark Larson, commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access. Larson remains commissioner with responsibility for Medicaid. He will retain a role advising on Vermont Health Connect, Chen said, "but he isn't going to make the decisions."

Last January, Shumlin asked Miller, while still Secretary of Commerce, to assist Larson in solving the problems plaguing Vermont Health Connect. The governor subsequently brought Miller onto his personal staff to focus full-time on health reform.

Chen proposed the new organization with Miller handling operational leadership for Vermont Health Connect. It is modeled on the incident command structure used to enable multiple organizations work together in emergencies. "This makes it much more clear who is in charge."

"We are unifying everything that has to do with Vermont Health Connect under one chain of command," Miller said.

Both Miller and Chen said the sudden decision to shut down the website wasn't triggered by a security breach. "This is not a discovery of a compromise of security," Miller said. Rather, he said, "We had a lot of things we were working on and we weren't getting them complete in the time we wanted them completed."

Before shutting down the website, Miller said the administration talked with Optum, the consultant hired in June to replace the original private partner developing the website, CGI. The state also advised the federal agency — Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — that regulates health insurance exchanges.

CMS is fully supportive of the decision," Miller said.

"Establishing this online health insurance network has been challenging from the start, to say the least," Miller said. "It is critical that we take advantage of this period of relatively low-volume use to improve Vermont Health Connect's operations, technology and security, and turn around the difficulties Vermonters have experienced with our website."

Optum, hired in June, has provided 125 call takers, doubling the number of people available to take customer queries. With Optum's help, the state has whittled the backlog of people needing revisions to their insurance records from 14,000 to about 2,500, Miller said. He expects the backlog to be eliminated by the end of the September or early October.

Chen said the new chain of command structure for Vermont Health Connect would remain in effect through the open enrollment period, which runs from Nov. 15 through Feb. 15. He said it was too early to say if it would become the permanent organizational structure for Vermont Health Connect.

"Once we get to a more stable state, we will make a decision," Chen said.